Does anyone have any important tips when it comes to writing essays for college applications? I have no clue what I am going to write about.
Here’s the approach I used with my son.
Day 1. Sit down with a list of the Common App prompts, each on a different page. Set a timer for 4 minutes per prompt, and brainstorm anything you could possibly consider using-- no idea is too off the wall at this stage.
Twenty eight minutes later, you’re done for the day.
Day 2: Go through your lists and either bullet what you could say about each topic or eliminate it. This could take a few days worth of 30 minute sessions, depending on the length of your original lists. At the end, you’ll probably have 6-10 possible essays.
Day 3. Detail what you’re planning to say for each topics. Bullets are still fine. No worries about intro or conclusion yet.
Day 4. Read through what you have. Eliminate any that don’t really address the prompt. Eliminate ones that are cliché (like how you learned through failure after not making the freshman basketball team, then went on to make Varsity as a junior.) Eliminate those that concentrate on a failure as opposed to growth. Eliminate those in which you’re a passive bystander. (After Hurricane Sandy, we lost power for 10 days. It was hard. But I learned to be tough.) Keep only those that “give them a reason to say yes.”
Day 5: Start writing the body for the topics that remain.
DAy 6. Decide which you like best, and begin editing.
Take a look at the prompts now. Give me 4 or 5 brief topics right off the top of your head.
@bjkmom thanks for the instructions! I’ll definitely do this and I’ll let you know what I come up with.
The best college essay advice I ever received was to keep a running list of moments in my life that meant something to me/were funny/wouldn’t happen to everyone. So many of my college essays sprung from one note on my phone where I’d jotted down little things about myself over the course of a couple months, as they happened.
Above all else, write about something that’s meaningful to you. I wrote about being a baseball fan and got into 7/9 schools that I applied to, including two with admit rates under 10%. It doesn’t have to be earth shattering to be good. Good luck!